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strictly geographical intent. But it still means East,
north of the water and as such South Londoners are not
Cockneys and they sound different. Or at least they
once did and the older ones still do. A South London
accent glides in a series of elongated smooth steps like
an ice skater whereas the staccato Cockney is like a
boxer punching a bag. East End London says Albert
Bridge, South East London says Elbert. There is
actually an old West End accent too - as spoken by
Catherine Tate’s foul-mouthed gran character. Ms Tate
is one of that rare breed of London West Enders
having grown up on the Brunswick Estate in
Bloomsbury. I lived there for a time back in the 1980s
and just a couple of years ago I shared a bus trip from
Benidorm with some lovely West End ladies from the
Brunswick who told me that they recognised the
fearsome gran not as the comedian’s grand-mother but
from an estate character called Nelly Flood.
English Returns
In 1204 AD, King John lost Normandy to the King
of France. Increasingly estranged from their French
cousins England became the chief concern of the
nobility and they began to adopt a modified English
as their native tongue. Some 150 years later, the Black
Death killed about one third of the English population
with the consequence that the labouring and merchant
classes grew in economic and social importance.
With many French words added a new English, this
is called Middle English by the academics, became
dominant in Britain. This was the language of Geoffrey
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and it became the
language of the courts and of Parliament.
Middle English is hard for us to read today but easier
than Old English. The words we borrowed from
Norman French have not changed in the way we
pronounce them for the last 800 years but in the
meantime the French have changed the way that
they pronounce their language. So old French
borrowings are Charles and choice and chief
whereas more recent French borrowings are cham-
pagne and machine and chef. This is another way in
which English has became a right so and so of a
language to learn for foreigners.
Up Yours! - The Persistent Saxons
When linguists from Brown University of Rhode
Island ran one million words from modern English
texts on a variety of topics through a computer they
found that the texts boiled down to 50,000 words of
which over half were borrowed from Norman
French. However every single one of the 100 most
used words was Anglo-Saxon. We express ourselves
best in the language of the Germanic tribes that
invaded all those centuries ago:
I love you. With this
ring I thee wed … from this day forward … for
better or worse…in sickness and in health.
Even
when love turns bad we are Saxon in our sentiments:
Go to hell. Drop dead. Up Yours!
The Great Vowel Shift
While modern English speakers can read Chaucer’s
Middle English with some difficulty, Chaucer's
pronunciation would have been completely
unintelligible to the modern ear. Shakespeare’s
English isn’t entirely straightforward for us to
understand but it has more in common with how we
speak today than it does with Chaucerian English.
In large part this is down to what linguists call the
Great Vowel Shift, a major change in pronunciation
that happened over the course of 100 years from
about 1400 when vowel sounds began to be made
further to the front of the mouth and the letter
e
at
the end of words fell silent. Chaucer’s lyf said as
leef became the modern life, feef became five,